1 year + a novel

For our 1 year anniversary Scott and I wanted to get to know our new home a little bit better. The drive along Highway 61 hugs the North Shoreline of Lake Superior and is supposed to be one of the most beautiful drives in the country (although, I think the Al-Can beats it). My older brother had taken a day trip up there earlier in the summer with his family, and the whole highway is dotted with charming resorts and restaurants, we thought it would be the perfect place for an intimate little getaway for the weekend that wasn't too far from home.

We stayed in a condo at the Lutsen Resort about 2 hours north of Duluth that was absolutely perfect. We could see the lake from our balcony! I was especially pleased because when I called to book a room, they asked us if we were visiting for any special occasion. When I told them it was for our anniversary they offered to have champagne waiting for us in our room when we arrived. When I said no thank you, they offered for sparkling cider! I was so pleased. I didn't even have to ask for a non-alcoholic option (I didn't even know that was an option.) So, when we arrived on Friday night they had left us 2 champagne glasses and sparkling cider. I was so pleased to have a nice little souvenier to bring home from our first anniversary.

On Saturday morning I slept in while Scott fished, then when he got back we had a late breakfast, then went kayaking with a group from the resort. I was really looking forward to this but I sat in the back and was in charge of steering and I am TERRIBLE at it. I am still convinced there was something else wrong because I swear I was doing everything I was supposed to! But I was just doing an awful job and I got so frustrated! There was nothing poor Scott could do but deal with grumpy little me sitting in the back of the kayak totally failing at life. Oh man. I am terrible. The lake was really beautiful though! It is HUUUGE. It does not look like a lake, it looks like an ocean, which I loved. Our guide told us that one guy got lost kayaking because he got too far from the shoreline and accidentally kayaked across the whole lake. Can you imagine?! There aren't mountains in Minnesota, it is so easy to get turned around and disoriented, to be lost in a kayak on a giant lake...no thanks!

After our kayaking adventure was over we spent the rest of the afternoon playing horseshoes and exploring shops along the highway. Scott even spent some time fishing in a little fishing hole right by the main lodge catching one fish after another. We went out to eat at a restaurant about 20 miles north called the Angry Trout. We went because severeal people had written in the guest journal in our room that this place was good, and they were right! We waited almost an hour for a table but it was definitely worth it. All of the ingredients were fresh and in season, locally grown, and the fish had been caught fresh from the lake. It was an awesome anniversary dinner.

I am all about traditions so I decided to save the top tier of our wedding cake to have on our 1 year anniversary. I had heard from multiple people that saving it was a waste and that it would taste weird or gross, but I really wanted to keep the tradition, and I'm so glad I did! I lugged that baby in an iced cooler from Utah to Minnesota, and then up to the resort for the weekend, complete with our own cutlery, plates, and napkins (because we didn't have any in the hotel). After our dinner on Saturday we came back to our hotel and had our cake and our sparkling cider on a little table I pulled up by the fireplace. It is one of my favorite memories from our anniversary. We sat and reminisced about our wedding day and our past year together and how much we have learned, how quickly the time goes, all of the fun things we want to do together, and our cake was still good (yay for good cakemakers!).

We checked out of the resort on Sunday morning and slowly made our way back home. We drove down highway 61, enjoying the view that we didn't get when we drove up since we drove up at night. We stopped at the Split Rock Light House and were too cheap to pay to get in, so we stopped at a pull off further down the road to take pictures. We also stopped at Gooseberry Falls and spent some time walking around, and taking pictures. We found this awesome flea market on the side of the road, and of course we stopped and grabbed a pie from the famous Betty's Pies (soooo gooood *droooool*). When we made it to Duluth we grabbed lunch, and went to see Bob Dylan's childhood home (guess whose request that was). THEN, we finally made the drive back home. It was a perfect, relaxing, and long (I have a feeling I'm doing to like having our anniversary fall close to labor day) weekend.

I remember before Scott and I got married I couldn't even imagine fighting with each other, I didn't even know what we would fight about. But, I learned very quickly that there are plenty of things to fight about, even when you're super compatible. I also learned that even though Scott and I are super compatible, we are also very, very different from each other (it is possible!) A large part of our first year was hard! I learned a lot about myself and discovered parts of my personality I didn't realize were a part of my personality. It was tough to face that, and figure out how to make things work. The best thing about marriage, though, is that even when things are really frustrating, you know that neither one of you is ever going to give up on the other. Yeah, our personalities clash occasionally, but we figure it out when that happens. Maybe it happened more at first than it does now, but only because we never gave up on one another. I have learned more about relationships and what love really means in this first year of marriage than I ever learned when I was single, and I am so grateful for that! Marriage is tough, but so much fun. It is worth every frustrating argument or uncomfortable conversation we have to have with one another. For everyone one of those, there are a hundred positive memories. I will never get tired of having someone to come home to every day, or taking a free Saturday morning (rare as they may be) to wake up slow and make breakfast together. I love little texts in the middle of the day just to see how the day is going. I love having a human furnace to curl up next to when I'm freezing at night (which is most nights). I love having someone who will laugh with me when I feel like being silly, and laugh at me when I'm being ridiculous. I love having someone to celebrate my pointless victories with, and comfort me when I'm disappointed in myself. Scott gives me perspective and reminds me constantly of what is really important. There is nothing more comforting than knowing you have someone who is always going to be cheering for you in your corner of the ring (like that boxing reference, Scotty?). I am so happy that I have someone who keeps choosing to love me despite all of my flaws. Marriage is tough, but marriage is the best, you guys. The absolute best.

this bridge took us from our condo to the main lodge and over the little fishing hole that Scott spent a couple hours in

the view from our balcony

i am totally pretending to have fun here, convincing, yes?!

the trail leading to the main lodge was full of raspberry bushes!

pre-anniversary dinner selfie

oh my gosh, we didn't even have plates! keeping it suuuuper classy with our paper towels. ah! let this be a lesson that the greatest memories do NOT have to be picture perfect ;)

and so.

Here's to an eternity of anniversaries with my favorite human, love you Scotty!

back on the grid

Lets be honest, this blog post is LONG overdue. So much has gone down in the last few months. Number one, we moved to Minnesota (!!!!) in June and I started my dietetics internship (which, I am now halfway through). 

Minnesota has been so, so great. We're living in my parents basement in their home just outside of the twin cities. Since my mom spends most of her time in Utah and my dad spends most of his time traveling, it's really just us most of the time. We definitely recognize what a charmed life we are currently leading, and are enjoying every second of it while we can. 

I LOVE the twin cities. They are big, but small, if that makes any sense? There is so much to do, but things don't feel so accelerated. There are lakes EVERYWHERE and walking paths everywhere, and everyone has a dog which has made me seriously puppy hungry. In the summer the leaves stay green through the season, and it is green EVERYWHERE. It is so so beautiful. Fall was late this year, but absolutely gorgeous. There are so many trees and lakes, I mean, everywhere you look is a photo opportunity. 

I've really loved the walking paths everywhere and have taken full advantage of them. I don't know what I will do without them when we go back to Utah. It is so nice not to have to share the road with cars. Plus, everywhere you run is gorgeous. I have 4-5 lakes to run around that are less than 10 miles from my house. I run pretty regularly now and am doing my best to stay with it through the winter! Last week I had my first winter run and it was 8 degrees out, there were frozen eyelashes, numb legs, and a very hot bath afterward. That didn't scare me away though! The humidity and lower elevation make it easier to breathe here. In Utah, it hurt my lungs to run when it was cold, but I don't get that here at all, which makes it SO much easier.

Scott has been spending all of his time either working or fishing for musky. Of course he made friends quickly with the local fly shop owner out here and had fishing friends within 3 days of moving out here. He did catch 1 musky this season after a day trip up north. The lakes are all frozen now, but before the season ended he was fishing at least twice a week and only caught 1 musky. They say musky are the "fish of 1000 casts" so while he has been putting his time in those fish have continued to elude him (all but one). 

Because I married the most hardworking, charismatic man out there ;), Scott has gotten some tickets from his work to various sports events. We have had some phenomenal seats at both football and baseball games. Seriously, I am not kidding when I say we are leading a charmed life.

By the time winter is over here, I may be ready to pack up and leave, but as of right now I am so happy here. The snow is here to stay as of 2 weeks ago and the temps are already in the negatives with wind chill. As long as I don't look at the "real feel", or the weather anywhere else, I do alright with this. I'm happy to have snow, and I'm excited for the holidays in the cities. 

So yeah! That's the basic run down of our life these days. We are busy and tired a lot of the time but so so happy. And now we'll let pictures take us out!

 a couple photos from some of my runs, this is in Lake Elmo park reserve. We boat here in the summer, and they have several great trails to run, and it is only a 10 minute drive from my house!

we have caught more than a few gorgeous sunsets off our back porch 

apple picking at a cute little orchard close to home. Scott and I tag teamed to get the best apples waaay up top 

we went to the county fair in the Summer, naturally, Scott made a connection with the animals

50 yard line, 22 rows back for the viking game, and 10 rows back behind home plate at the Twins game, we're spoiled and we know it 

 goodies from ours and a ward members garden we were tending in the Summer, look at those carrots!

This lake is about a half mile from our house, some Sundays I can get Scott to walk with me around it.

We found this little guy on one of our walks!

found on one of my runs (basically how I feel about paved running paths)

this was at the zoo here which was FREE. free! They have a beautiful conservatory and Japanese garden there too that I really wish I had gotten pictures of.

there's lots of snapping turtles out here. Scott found this little guy on a run and brought him home for me to see, then we set him free in the pond behind our house.

**separate post about our anniversary coming soon**

henries do highway 1

scott and i got back from our graduation (i graduated! yay!) vacation on monday and holy cow you guys, i needed that. i can't even remember the last time that i went on a vacation without having some sort of side project that i was also working on (program/scholarship applications, homework (summer school was the WORST idea) or wedding planning). even on our honeymoon i was thinking about homework because we had already been in school for a week. being in school has basically had me on gogogo mode all the time, which mostly i love, i'm a do-er, but being able to leave the world behind for a few days was chicken soup for the soul, man. most of the time we were camping, and in and out of cell service/wifi zones. there was no email checking to be had, no back of the mind to-do list nagging at me that would make me resent my vacation when i came back to real life, it was a fantasy!

initially i had planned to plan the whole trip day by day on what we would do (i'm the type of person who makes plans to make plans? i may need an intervention) but i married scott, who hates being stuck to an agenda, so we compromised and i booked campsites/hotels ahead of time, did some research on places i'd like to go, and we hopped in the car and followed our gps. free souls, if you will, blowing wherever the wind carried us. if you're reading this scott, you were right, and this is one of the few times i will agree and say that less plans was better.

driving down highway 1 makes you feel like you're in a car commercial. the roads are narrow and go around all these crazy hairpin turns and the views are seriously unreal. i couldn't stop saying how gorgeous it was. "it's so beautiful." "it is soooo beautiful." "oh my gosh scott i can't believe how beautiful this is!" scott was like "i knooooow, lay off it girl" (only joking of course ;)  but really though, it's beautiful.

next best thing on the trip definitely had to be the food. we made it a goal to only eat out once a day, which we stuck to pretty well up until the end of the trip (trying to keep food fresh with ice in a cooler only works for so long. ugh.) but the places we ate served meals i still fantasize about. i think it is really important on vacations to SEE and DO, but scott and i are total foodies (me? nooooo) so TASTE is right up there as well. spending good money on a good meal is just as fun for us as going on a hike or catching sand crabs on the beach (which we also did). we had incredible seafood in san francisco that was sent out to us on a sizzling platter, and our meal in monterey was just. ugh. it was so good! when i feel strongly about something i just repeat the same thing over and over again (see above). and that meal, so good you guys. so good... fresh seafood really is phenomenally better than the alternative. remind me why i live in a landlocked state? we also went to an italian restaurant in tahoe that had lasagna i could write poetry about (that ricotta, droooool).

anyway, it was a great trip. our first real vacation as a married couple, put that one in the record books. on the drive home we talked about where our next big vacation should be. we're hoping to make it down to brazil sometime in the near future (post-internship, during our winter, their summer), and i mentioned hawaii because everybody goes to hawaii and i've never been so we obviously have to fix that, but who knows!

here are some photos from my fancy new camera that i'm still totally learning the ropes to. loving it!

 at our first stop in eureka, naturally scott found something to catch

 this was literally a 10 minute walk from our campsite. we sat and watched the sunset over the water that night

 the trees are like a dr. seuss book all along the coast. they grow sideways because of the ocean breeze

 listening to the all the sea lions bark at the pier was a riot, some of those guys are huuuge! we liked watching them climb all over each other

 so it costs 6 bucks to drive across the golden gate, which we only had to do once, except we ended up doing 3 times because gps didn't take into consideration road work. there is definitely a learning curve learning how to drive through san fran

 one of the beaches along the 17-mile drive in monterey. the sand on this beach was amazingly soft! i was bummed that we didn't get a great view along the drive though with the weather being so foggy and misty

 we stopped here and walked down to a beach where scott attempted to catch some fish, no luck. but we DID see a couple getting married there! the bride seriously looked SO beautiful, and how romantic is that to get married in big sur overlooking the ocean?! it was seriously dreamy you guys.

 i only thought we would spend a couple hours here, we were there ALL DAY. it was so much fun!

driving through avenue of the giants, scott is no small man but those trees made us feel like little hobbitses

thus concludes the henrie vacation journal for now, til next time.

typical ramblings about the weather and stuff

this week is spring break for me and scott and this is also the first spring break EVER where i have been totally okay with staying at home instead of seeking out warmer weather, because holy bananas you guys, it is sunny and 50-60 degrees up in here and i die. every time spring rolls around i wonder if i actually suffer from SAD because the instant there are blue skies and all you need is a light jacket my mood just soars. i don't even realize how bad it is until one sunny day and then i'm done for. every year i try to tell myself to hold off on the excitement because this IS utah and we've still got 2, maybe 3 good snows left in us before winter is officially done for, but i can't! daylight savings time isn't helping my case. i get off work at 8 every night and now there is a tiny sliver of sun over the mountains when i get off, so, as far as i'm concerned, spring is here. not in full force, but enough to kick the winter blues. speaking of daylight savings, this years was certainly a doozy. this weekend scott and i went down to las vegas with his brothers and their wives for a boxing match, so on sunday we lost not one, but TWO hours because of the time change. we were out late saturday because of the match and didn't set our alarms because "who sleeps in until 11??" well, we about did. woke up at 10:40, 20 minutes before we were set to check out. after getting home, scott and i got hit with a rough bout of the flu (scott got it worse than me, sorry scotty!) so we've been sleeping until like, noon every day. my sleep schedule is totally out of whack now, but since i think i'm over the worst of that little bug i'm hoping for a more productive second half of the week.

graduation is now less than two months away and i'm in denial about the whole thing. i think after being in college for 6 years (plus those other 12 years of school) you just start to feel like you're going to be in school forever. what HASN'T hit me is the "i'm scared to enter real life" jitters. everybody talks about how scared they are, and how they don't know how NOT be a student anymore. but nope. hasn't hit me. i am ready! and SO excited to be out practicing all this stuff i've learned. maybe part of it is that after graduation i still have to complete an internship before i take the RD exam, so i guess i'm still KIND OF a student. plus i have a plan and know what i'm doing after graduation (minnesota, the henries are comin for ya!) and a change of pace (and place) is exciting!! goll, did i mention i'm excited?!

scott and i  have been unbelievably lucky the last 2 months and i'm wondering what we did to deserve it, or what misfortune is going to happen upon us to even everything out in the universe. in january i won a free night at a hotel in jackson (which we have yet to redeem) and then last month scott went down to the fly fishing film tour in salt lake and won an $800 fly rod. and then yesterday he won another, $700 fly rod from a drawing at a local fly shop. so, mostly it's been scott that has gotten on the luck. but, $1500 won in fly fishing stuff is $1500 LESS that we have to spend of OUR money on it, so. im happy!

and now, some photographic evidence that we do things besides school sometimes :)

  like temple date nights

 this was my younger sister and niece (who was totally disinterested, obviously) at my baby sisters state swim meet

 more selfies that i take out of boredom and scott kindly plays along

 basking in the sun! AND lets hear it for a short haired, beardless husband!

annnnd here we are at the MGM before the boxing match which was mostly a lot more fun than i expected!

til next time, blog world!

happy love day to my love

Casey Mcfarland Photography

"pure love is an incomparable, potent power for good."
-Elder Richard G. Scott

thank you for teaching me how to be good every day, scotty. i love you!

a post about everything

hi! january is over half done and i just can't believe it. christmas and new years were so so fun. it was just so great to celebrate our first christmas together. i love surprises and i forgot about basically everything that i had asked for so being on the receiving end was good as ever, and i surprised scott with a couple little gifts so i was glad i got away with that (because he went and bought himself a CANOE for an early christmas present which, for the record, i am a strictly "MUST wait until christmas day for presents" kind of person, but apparently i can't win every battle). i also got to see mike and juli which was nice because i haven't seen them since our wedding, and even then you don't really SEE them, you know?? mike and juli we are coming to visit you guys before you kiss DC goodbye! i swear it!

for our wedding we got this little date jar with various gift cards to places around town for when we're poor and want to do something fun (all the time). anyway, i had scott check to see if any expired at the end of the year, and the only one that did was passes to the hot springs sooo that is what we did for new years. we didn't even end up using them because someone we knew had rented out the place and just gave us passes, i don't really know how it worked actually. when someone gives you free passes to something you don't ask questions. but it was fun. there was a waterslide, and i'm not sure at which point adults decide they're too old to go down waterslides? maybe it's when you have kids or something because my mom never did that kind of stuff at pools, but i just haven't reached that point yet. maybe it's just that i'm immature. that's probably it.

school has started back up and we are BOTH in school this semester and to be honest i was really interested to see how that would pan out with us seeing less of each other but it really has not been bad. in fact, i think scott seems to have way more energy which i just love. crossing my fingers that lasts through may. i am in my last semester and have been getting frequent waves of nostalgia about it. i am so excited to put a stamp of completion on my undergrad but guaranteed i'll probably bawl saying goodbye to all the girls in the dietetics program when the day comes. i mean we have been THROUGH IT. and you just can't replace the bonds you make going through a program like this together. these last two years of my undergrad have been chaotic in the best kind of way so yeah, i'm going to miss that. i'll save the rest of that sap for another time. for now i will drink and be merry for tomorrow we die (graduate)!

in other news i chopped my hair again and (for now) am a convert to the short hair. who knew? also (sound the trumpets) i have officially been accepted as an intern for the USU dietetic distance internship and will be completing my rotations in minnesota upon graduation! lets all breathe a MASSIVE sigh of relief on that one. scott and i are so excited to get out there and i am itching to get started on rotations. i haven't determined my official start date but i am hoping its asap as possible.

this post is getting lengthy. once i start writing i get so excited and there's so many things that i want to talk about! i guess i'll just have to start blogging more ;)
merry christmas, happy new year, happy mlk weekend people, go do something fun! i'm gonna eat cake. yum.

this is the only picture i have of us on christmas and it wasn't even christmas it was christmas eve. mildly disappointed about that

 and you guys my niece is seriously the CUTEST. i mean, just don't even get me started.

 i've been super good this semester about getting up for my morning workouts and getting to see the sunrise every morning is serious payoff. love it!